Should I go Dual Core or Quad Core? Intel C2 DUO E6850 vs. Quad-CoreQ6600

[Gypsy Baron]

Out of curiosity, since you give relative values:

What temperature do you see for the Q6600 as a whole?

And what are each of the core's temperatures?

Regards,

Patrick.

Right now just running in 2D mode with browser I'm seeing
Tcase at 38C, core 0 45C, 1= 42C, 2 = 39C and 4 = 45C

My room ambient is 16C and hard drives are at 33C.
My 8800GTS GPU is at 56C.

Running Prime95 now I see Tcase = 50C, 0=58C, 1 = 48C, 2= 47C 3 = 59C.
Tcase MAX for the 6600 G0 is 71C.

I'm using Speedfan with the -15C temperarure adjustment applied.
Measurement readouts using Everest are the same.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor
Model BX80562Q6600
M-Board: GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
Memory: 2 X CORSAIR Dominator 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual
Channel Kit ( $GB total )
Video: EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3
HD's: 2 x Seagate Barracuda ES ST3250620NS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA
3.0Gb/s
Power: Thermaltake Purepower RX W0143RU ATX12V 550W Cable Management
Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 RC-534-KKN2-GP ATX Mid Tower Case
Cooling: Rosewill RCX-Z775-EX 92mm 2 Ball PWM CPU Cooler

Paul

 

[kony]

I would say I'm open to swapping the CPU I get for a new one in the
future, but not that soon.

Basically, if I can overclock the Q6600 to 3.0GHz using a 1333MHz FSB,
using only the stock cooler, without reducing the life of the chip; then
I will get the Q6600.

Is this possible?

Kind Regards,

Matt

First, help us understand why the 3.0GHz figure. Did you
see one of my other posts where I mentioned the heat factor,
that you can overclock a dual core further than a quad (more
than 3.0GHz) before any particular cooling system becomes
the limitation.

It might seem as thought I am trying to steer you to a dual
core instead of quad. Perhaps, because it does seem it will
offer you more performance for the described uses, but in
the end I don't have to use the system and only present what
seems an overlooked aspect.

 

[Patrick Vervoorn]

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Right now just running in 2D mode with browser I'm seeing
Tcase at 38C, core 0 45C, 1= 42C, 2 = 39C and 4 = 45C

Tcase is the temperature indicated by a case- or motherboard-sensor? Or is
this the 'overall' temperature of the Q6600?

Core temperatures look ok, but perhaps a bit high for an idle system?

My room ambient is 16C and hard drives are at 33C.
My 8800GTS GPU is at 56C.

Sounds similar to what I have.

Running Prime95 now I see Tcase = 50C, 0=58C, 1 = 48C, 2= 47C 3 = 59C.
Tcase MAX for the 6600 G0 is 71C.

What do you mean with Tcase MAX? The maximum temperature you ever saw, or
the temperature until which a Q6600 G0 is certified to work ok? If that's
indeed the 'overall' temperature of the Q6600, at 71C I expect the cores
to be around 90 to 100 C?

I'm running a Q6600 using the default Intel cooler, no overclocking, and
it's running SetiBOINC 24/7. I get an 'overall' temperature of around
55-57C, with the cores hovering around the 65-70C mark. I might have to
experiment a bit with the settings of the case-fans, since I'm using an
Antec P182 case with all of the case-fans set at the lowest speed.

I'm using Speedfan with the -15C temperarure adjustment applied.
Measurement readouts using Everest are the same.

What do you mean with "the -15C temperature adjustment"?

Regards, Patrick.

 

[Fred]

True and from what I have read the reason Intel have delayed their
launch of the new range is because of the hardware bug in the AMD
quad-cores. It must make the AMD offering less of a threat to their market
share.

Erratum degrades Phenom 9500, 9600 performance
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

Anyhow the local pc shop here in Australia has just got stock of the
E8500 3.16GHz 6 MB cache for $349 Australian
and the E8400 3.0GHz 6 MB cache for $249
compared to existing
E6750 2.66GHz 4 MB cache $220
E6850 3.0GHz 4MB cache $328
So here at least the new 3.0GHz c2d is cheaper than the old 3.0GHz cpu
Picture of retail packaging here.
http://www.itsky.com.au/assets/catalog/parts/e8400.jpg

 

[Gypsy Baron]

Tcase is the temperature indicated by a case- or motherboard-sensor? Or is
this the 'overall' temperature of the Q6600?

Tcase is reported by the Q6600 sensor as well as the individual core
sensors.

Core temperatures look ok, but perhaps a bit high for an idle system?

I'm running overclocked to 3.2Ghz with the voltage at 1.4V.
The individual cores are typically 7C higher than Tc but also
read various values in between.

Sounds similar to what I have.


What do you mean with Tcase MAX? The maximum temperature you ever saw, or
the temperature until which a Q6600 G0 is certified to work ok? If that's
indeed the 'overall' temperature of the Q6600, at 71C I expect the cores
to be around 90 to 100 C?

Tc is the value Intel uses to spec the temperature limits, etc.
See the following Intel document and have a look at the charts
on page 75 for the Q6600 G0 ( 95W ) chip.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/31559205.pdf

-SNIP-

What do you mean with "the -15C temperature adjustment"?

Regards, Patrick.

First, that should be an offset of +15C....without it Speedfan will
read the Core temps 15C lower than actual. Sorry for the error.

Speedfan reports temperatures based on a particular sensor
reference point, as I understand it. It has been reported
on several overclocking sites that for the Q6600 ( and possibly
others ) the Speedfan data is incorrect unless one applies a
+15C adjustment. This can be done by going to the "Configure" tab,
"Advanced", select "Intel Core" from the drop down list and enter
a temperature offset of "15" for each core.

I'm using Speedfan version 4.33 BTW. As I mentioned earlier, the
adjusted temps corellate with Everest. Everest calls Tc "CPU" temp
while Speedfan reports it as "Temp2" on my motherboard. Speedfans
"Core" temp is the 8800GTS GPU temp.

Paul

 

[Patrick Vervoorn]

Tcase is reported by the Q6600 sensor as well as the individual core
sensors.

Aha, ok. It's what listed as the 'CPU' temp in Everest, and something like
Temp3 in SpeedFan (IIRC, not in front of the system at the moment). It's
also the CPU temperature as reported by nTune.

Tc is the value Intel uses to spec the temperature limits, etc.
See the following Intel document and have a look at the charts
on page 75 for the Q6600 G0 ( 95W ) chip.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/31559205.pdf

Very enlightening, thanks for the link.

First, that should be an offset of +15C....without it Speedfan will
read the Core temps 15C lower than actual. Sorry for the error.

Speedfan reports temperatures based on a particular sensor
reference point, as I understand it. It has been reported
on several overclocking sites that for the Q6600 ( and possibly
others ) the Speedfan data is incorrect unless one applies a
+15C adjustment. This can be done by going to the "Configure" tab,
"Advanced", select "Intel Core" from the drop down list and enter
a temperature offset of "15" for each core.

I'm using Speedfan version 4.33 BTW. As I mentioned earlier, the
adjusted temps corellate with Everest. Everest calls Tc "CPU" temp
while Speedfan reports it as "Temp2" on my motherboard. Speedfans
"Core" temp is the 8800GTS GPU temp.

Yes, I compared the readouts from Everest and SpeedFan (also 4.33) and
indeed SpeedFan's core-temperature were off by 15C, so I'm seeing the
same.

Thanks for the explanation!

Regards, Patrick.

 

[gsboris]

What about the new Intel Penryn range due out soon. Have you considered one
of them?


Hey guys. I'm looking at upgrading my PC and I've come across an
interesting problem:

- Pay £165 for a Intel Dual Core E6850 (clocked @ 3.0GHz)

- Pay £160 for a Quad Core Q6600 (clocked @ 2.4GHz)

Now to my untrained eye, the quad-core seems like an easy choice. Am I
correct, or is the performance benefit from the 2 additional cores
completely lost by the low bandwidth connection between the 2 dies, as
mentioned in a Wikipedia article below:

"A quad-core CPU (as a two-die set in particular), however, can rarely
double the processing ability of each of its constituent halves (e.g.
the Kentsfield rarely doubles the ability of the Conroe), due to a
loss
of performance resulting from connecting them (i.e. sharing the narrow
memory bandwidth, and operating system overhead of handling twice as
many cores and threads)."

Will all applications for Windows eventually become multi-threaded and
fully utilise a quad core setup? Because if so then surely the 2.4GHz
quad core would outperform the 3.0GHz dual core in the future?

Basically this comes down to dual core vs. quad core, and I'm hoping
there's a clear consensus about which to buy!

Kind Regards,

Matt

I went for quad because of 8Mb cash that, presumably, is shared
between all the cores.

 

[Matthew]

waiting for my pc, but most of the time my pc is idle. To be honest

Maybe so but I do like the fact that I can have my dual-core PC doing
something heavy-duty like encoding and still have it responsive and snappy
if I want to check email etc. Encoding on my old single-core was an
overnight job as the PC was useless for anything else once I hit "start".

I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.

I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
decide between dual and quad core? With quad would I be able to do some
dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other words
would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core and stick
with it?

What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad processing?
I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is recommended - is that true.

Thanks all.

 

[Sir-Les-MP]

I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.

I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
decide between dual and quad core? With quad would I be able to do some
dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other
words would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core
and stick with it?

What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad
processing? I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is
recommended - is that true.

Thanks all.

you don't need a 64bit O/S to use either a dual core ore Quad core cpu
however you are correct if you intend to use 4gb or more Ram then a
64bit O/S is recommended as it will be able to address all the memory
available where as 32bit xp/vista will have some issues past 3gb
depending on the motherboard and memory set-up you may see just over
3.5Gb using a 32bit O/S

 

[kony]

I find myself in exactly the same position as the original poster.

I've found the same problem with single-core video encoding, but how to
decide between dual and quad core?

You don't need either, just go into Task Manager,
right-click on the list item using the processor time, and
set it's priority to "low". It's largely a myth that
anything that isn't realtime needs more than one processor
(core). In some cases the application doing the encoding
even lets you set it's process priority ahead of time so
it's always what you want... and IMO most people will want
"low", even if they had a dual core or quad system.

With quad would I be able to do some
dvd compression, burn a dvd, encode some wavs to mp3, and still have a
responsive pc to do some text editing, web browsing, etc.? In other words
would each of the processor intensive tasks get assigned a core and stick
with it?

The answer is that you will have more processes running than
cores even with a quad core. Seldom do people want to
consider this truth. Adding more cores does give the system
more processing power in general when more than one process
is linearlly bound instead of just idling away most of the
time. Yes once a process is assigned to a core it will
continue using it. What remains is as mentioned above, that
with more than 4 processes whether your system remains
responsive for what you are doing in the foreground depends
on that task running at higher priority than what is running
in the background. Merely putting the app in focus by using
it does elevate the priority but not necessarily enough in
some cases.

I'm not trying to talk you out of a faster new dual or quad
core system, I'm just saying for years I had no problem
using a single core to do video encoding or the other things
you list in the background while the system was fully
responsive for text editing or web, email, etc in the
foreground. With a good dual or quad core what you get is
the background linear processor consumer jobs get done a lot
faster.

What about the OS, do I need 64bit xp or vista with dual/quad processing?
I've heard that if you get 4GB RAM, a 64bit OS is recommended - is that true.

Your applications and drivers are the other factor to
consider, 64bit OS is not needed for dual or quad core
processors.